Page 37 of The Perfect Deception

Man, he’d have to look into get­ting a Kevlar suit made up if his dad was go­ing to con­tinue sling­ing in­sults his way, no mat­ter how veiled they might be. He rose from the chair.

“She works so she might not be able to get time off.”

“I’m sure she’d love to visit her boyfriend’s law of­fice and meet his high-pow­ered co­work­ers.”

Adam re­turned to his desk, nau­se­ated. His fa­ther was ma­nip­u­lat­ing him and us­ing Dina. He was go­ing along with it. Be­cause re­ally, wasn’t he go­ing out with her to get his fa­ther off his back? A part of his con­science agreed, but there was a small piece that re­belled. Her skin yes­ter­day on the trail, when he’d ad­justed her scarf, had been softer than any­thing he’d touched in a long time. He’d lin­gered, ad­just­ing the scarf in minis­cule move­ments to try to pro­long con­tact. Had they not been in pub­lic and in the cold, he would have re­moved the scarf, and ev­ery­thing else she was wear­ing, just to feel if the rest of her was as soft. When she’d touched his scar? Heat had ra­di­ated from her fin­ger­tip on his cheek­bone to the edges of his scalp, down his neck. He’d wanted her to touch more of him.

But those things spoke of phys­i­cal at­trac­tion, which was sur­pris­ing given how dif­fer­ent she looked from those he was nor­mally at­tracted to. Yet, he’d kissed her in the car on the way back from din­ner with his fa­ther. If she hadn’t stopped him, he’d have gone much fur­ther.

But he loved talk­ing with her, hear­ing how her mind worked, laugh­ing at her ob­scure trivia. When they weren’t to­gether, he missed her. Even if she scared the crap out of him. Be­cause she got him. She knew him bet­ter than friends he’d known for years. He liked that. In fact, he was crazy about that.

There was a grow­ing part of him that felt at ease around her. It was com­fort­ing to know you didn’t have to play a part, even if you couldn’t help play­ing it any­way. Be­cause there had been times when he’d let his in­ner self shine through—like when they talked about his love of Vikings—and it had been a re­lief.

So invit­ing her to his of­fice was go­ing to be dif­fi­cult. Be­cause he was us­ing her, but he also cared for her. Bal­anc­ing those two pieces was go­ing to be tricky.

Back at his desk, he picked up the phone and di­aled her num­ber.

“Hello?”

Her voice filled him with warmth. He couldn’t stop the smile from teas­ing his lips.

“Hey, Dina. Are you free for lunch?”

“To­day? Yeah.”

The plea­sure in her voice made his re­quest bit­ter­sweet. “Good, why don’t you come to my of­fice at twelve. We can go to a restau­rant in my build­ing.”

“I’ll see you then.”

The busy­work he was still han­dling did lit­tle to make the rest of the morn­ing pass, but some­how, the hands of the clock moved along un­til noon, when his phone rang. With­out both­er­ing to an­swer it, Adam sprinted to the re­cep­tion desk and stuck his head around the door into the wait­ing area.

“Hey, Dina, come on in.”

He wanted to kiss her hello, run his hands be­neath her pea coat, play with her springy hair, but there were peo­ple around. In­stead, he gri­maced. “I’ll give you a tour.”

His stom­ach clenched a lit­tle as they walked through the of­fice, wav­ing to his friends be­hind glass walls. He’d do what his fa­ther wanted, but fast, and then he’d have the rest of lunch to en­joy spend­ing time with her.

“Have you known him long?” Dina asked, as he pointed out his friend John be­hind a glass wall.

“Yeah, he’s one of my close friends here.” Close be­ing rel­a­tive, of course. He and John hadn’t spo­ken much since Ash­ley had made her ac­cu­sa­tions.

“What about him?” she asked, point­ing to Paul, an­other one of his friends who’d also been avoid­ing him.

“Yeah, we of­ten have lunch to­gether.”

He steered her around the para­le­gal de­part­ment, rat­tling off a list of names and keep­ing them mov­ing un­til they were near his of­fice.

“Marie, this is my friend, Dina,” he said to his sec­re­tary.

She waved. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Dina said.

“And this,” he said, open­ing his door, “is my of­fice.”

She took a cur­sory look around, glanced out his win­dow, and nod­ded. “Nice.”

He shouldn’t have been sur­prised by her re­ac­tion. She wasn’t the type of woman to be im­pressed by an ac­tual of­fice, even if it had a win­dow.